Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

In the first two years of abortion in Ireland, 13,243 babies had their lives ended by the State abortion services. By the end of this month, 20,000 individual living, human beings will have their lives ended by the State. That is an incredible situation on the basis of legislation passed by the Minister of State’s party, the Labour Party, Fianna Fáil, Sinn Féin and People before Profit. That is 127 babies a week that are losing their lives in this State because of this particular law. It is equivalent to the total to 850 classrooms of children who will never make it to school, who will never get to live and grow up, like the Members who were sitting here at a number of minutes ago. In the North of Ireland the Sinn Féin MLAs voted against children with disabilities being able to make it to full term. They voted for abortion right up until birth for a child with disabilities.

When it comes to this law, these same political parties will argue that the State imposes in legislation rights for animals. Indeed we have those rights for animals in law in this State. It states "A person shall not ... perform an operation or procedure ... involving interference with the sensitive tissue or bone structure of an animal ... without the use of an appropriate anaesthetic". Yet, the same right is not being afforded to individual living human beings during late-term abortions in this State. There is a cruelty. There is a lack of compassion. There is a lack of sympathy in the ideology that forces these political parties to ignore completely the humanity of these living individual human beings. I urge the Government parties to make sure they vote for this particular Bill and to make sure that they are not remembered for generations for their lack of compassion.

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